Subj : Re: controversy!
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : fusion
Date : Mon May 20 2024 12:55 am

On 19 May 2024, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...
 
 pF>  I've upgraded myself into a hole. With a 16:9 monitor, I could run
 pF>  DOSBOX and fill the screen with a nice proportional font. With an
 pF>  ultrawide monitor, I get two big black bars on either side, which ruins
 pF>  the full screen experience for me.

i've been thinking about this recently:

most of the dos text experience was with an 8x16 font .. 640x400 for 80x25 cols/rows. this exactly matches a 1920x1200 monitor (which you can actually get)

for a 1080p screen to match you could BBS at 22 rows.. 12 pixels top and bottom isn't as bad of a loss.. you'd lop off the top of most menu ansis but the message reader and all that would be fine. for the authentic bbs experience you can pretend your monitor is partially broken ;)

buuuuut since you'd have viewed it on a monitor that forces 4:3 onto an 8:5 resolution back then anyways, i guess it's not really relevant. a modern monitor simply can't do what a crt does.

i think personally if i was going to be picky i'd like to try out a nice 8x19 font.. that's pretty close to what dosbox might stretch a 4:3 text mode session to on a 1440p 16:9 screen.. you'd still have the bars on the side and lose 15 pixels (so maybe 7 on top 8 on bottom), but you could have the graphics library show the pixels 1:1 instead:
https://learnopengl.com/img/getting-started/texture_filtering.png
where at exactly 2x, and specifically 3x for 1440p (57 pixels tall) it would have no, i duno, "smart" scaling done to it.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
 * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)

.